The opening lines of the story introduce the reader to a house without inhabitants in a city without survivors in a world that may well be devoid of human life. In "August 2026" he argues that utopia and dystopia are the same place. For Bradbury this either/or perception is far too simplistic. Or, technology threatens to eliminate humans completely by making them, quite simply, obsolete. Technology can offer the promise of a future paradise in which mechanization sets humans free from labor, hunger, and disease. Wells to the present, science-fiction writers have been faced with two mutually exclusive views of technological progress. In general, from the time of Jules Verne and H. What is uncommon about "August 2026," then, is not its theme of nuclear disaster but its view of the technology that made such a disaster possible. In 1945, for the first time in human history, the end of the world became a real possibility, and writers of Ray Bradbury's generation were clearly influenced by that event. This is not uncommon for a work of science fiction written in the 1950s. "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" addresses the central fear of its time-a nuclear holocaust.
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